Deposit refunds double in 2024
Many things have changed since 1980, but not Connecticut’s bottle deposit refund.
Consumers have been receiving the same 5 cents back for soda and beer cans for the past 43 years.
But that will change on Jan. 1 with a new deposit of 10 cents — and legislators hope that will lead to more recycling.
The political and economic landscapes have shifted sharply since 1980, including the election of seven U.S. presidents and 12 House Speakers in Connecticut. An inflation calculator shows that a nickel in 1980 is now worth 19 cents — nearly four times higher.
With more bottles and cans ending up in the trash in recent years, Gov. Ned Lamont and state legislators supported doubling the redemption to 10 cents as part of a multipronged attempt to reduce trash and increase recycling. The legislature enacted the most sweeping reforms of the bottle bill in four decades in 2021, and they gave time for retailers and wholesalers to prepare for the switch on Jan. 1 as hundreds of bottle-redemption machines have been reprogrammed to return 10 cents per bottle and can.
A key point for consumers is that any item returned starting on the first of the year will receive 10 cents regardless of when it was purchased, officials said.
The Connecticut Package Stores Association recently distributed a notice to hundreds of stores statewide to alert owners to the fine points about the increased deposit.
“It does not matter when the container was sold — any customer who returns an eligible container on or after January 1st will receive 10 cents back for that return,” Jean Cronin, executive director of the package stores association, wrote to her members. “Likewise, you will need to charge a 10-cent deposit on these bottle bill containers as of Jan. 1st. Please reprogram your cash register systems accordingly.”
The upcoming increase in the deposit marks the final piece of a 2021 law that was phased in through the years. The law includes a long-awaited increase in the fee that is paid to retailers and redemption centers, which are key players in handling huge volumes of bottles and cans. In another major change, the law this year started including energy drinks, sports drinks, juices, hard ciders, and hard maltbased seltzers for the first time, expanding the number of items to be recycled.
Deputy House Speaker Pro Tempore Robert Godfrey, one of the longest-serving legislators, said the bottle bill is so old that no current legislator was serving when the measure was passed more than four decades ago. The law, he says, has been a success.
“It worked,” said Godfrey, a Danbury Democrat who was first elected in 1988. “It cleaned up the trash on the side of the roads. It got people to recycle. It continues to work.”
Increased recycling
The main reason for increasing the deposit, advocates say, is to increase recycling. States that already have a deposit of 10 cents have higher rates of redemption than Connecticut.
The Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, one of the most influential voices at the Capitol in recent decades on environmental issues, notes that Michigan has had the nation’s highest recycling rate with a 10-cent deposit. By contrast, Connecticut’s rate was 50% in 2019, according to bottlebill.org. Michigan’s rate reached as high as 97% through the decades.
“When Oregon increased its deposit value from five to ten cents the collection rate for deposit containers immediately jumped from 64% in 2016 to 86% in 2019,” the league said in a note to legislators. “Due to the increase in the financial incentive to participate, container deposit programs collect for recycling 2-4 times the rate of beverage containers than non-deposit collection systems.”
The Container Recycling Institute, which charts the industry and gathers statistics, says, “States with bottle bills have a beverage container recycling rate of around 60%, while non-deposit states only reach about 24%.”
While many Connecticut consumers have been familiar with the bottle bill for their entire adult lives, Connecticut is actually a rarity as only 10 states have “bottle bill” laws.
Besides Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon, the only states that have bottle bill laws are Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, California, Iowa, and Hawaii. By contrast, Rhode Island and New Hampshire do not collect any deposits on their bottles.
Package stores
The owners of the state’s 1,250 package stores have never been major fans of the system because they often have tiny shops that cover all their space with as many bottles of wine and spirits as possible. But by Connecticut law, retailers must redeem the deposit for any brand they sell, including beer.
“We don’t have the space for the machines,” Cronin said. “Package stores do not have large spaces like grocery stores. People find it easier to redeem it through the machines. It’s never been a good set-up for the package stores. … It’s like garbage pick-up. We’re not meant to take garbage back. We sell products.”
Unclaimed deposits go to state
After years of battles, including in court, the state eventually won the right to keep the money from unclaimed deposits. If a consumer fails to return the bottle, the nickel deposit goes to the state. Some of that money, though, recently started going back to the distributors during the past fiscal year.
The case went to court in 2009 as distributors fought against the state’s retroactive seizure of the nickels before the law went into effect
For about 30 years, the beer and soda distributors kept the nickels that went unredeemed by consumers and used that money to help pay for recycling efforts. The money is substantial because the state estimated at the time that 500 million containers were never returned to the store, meaning that a total of 500 million nickels — or $25 million a year — was at stake.
An estimated 30% of containers are never returned and often end up in the garbage. For years, a heavy lobbying effort at the state Capitol by the distributors blocked any changes in the law.
Both Gov. Lowell P. Weicker and Gov. John G. Rowland tried and failed to claim the unclaimed deposits, but the legislature finally voted under Gov. M. Jodi Rell for the state to keep the money that was not refunded to consumers at the stores.
Besides Connecticut, courts in Massachusetts, Maine, and Michigan have declared that the money from the unclaimed cans must go to the state because they have been considered abandoned by the consumer. A recent update in the last fiscal year was that the state sends some of the money back to the distributors.
“It does not matter when the container was sold — any customer who returns an eligible container on or after January 1st will receive 10 cents back for that return. Likewise, you will need to charge a 10-cent deposit on these bottle bill containers as of Jan. 1st. Please reprogram your cash register systems accordingly.”
JEAN CRONIN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
OF THE CONNECTICUT PACKAGE STORES ASSOCIATION
Miniature liquor bottles
Another point for consumers is that the fee on miniature liquor bottles, known in the trade as “nips,” will remain at five cents. Since buyers pay a fee, rather than a deposit, they do not get their nickel back.
The fee from the tiny bottles is distributed to the cities and towns, reaching nearly $9 million over the past two years.
State officials had estimated that the nips would generate an estimated $4.5 million per year for cities and towns, based on the sale of 90 million nips bottles per year in Connecticut. That estimate has largely proven accurate.
The money sent to the communities varies widely, depending on how many bottles are sold. The highest amount was in New Haven, where the city has received $410,000 over two years through the sale of more than 2 million bottles. Both Hartford and Bridgeport received about $295,000 each through the sale of about 1.6 million bottle, according to the statistics.
Bristol generated about $212,000 from 1.1 million bottles, while Enfield received $156,000 from 814,000 bottle sales.
Among smaller towns, Farmington and Glastonbury received $43,000 each over two years. Simsbury received nearly $32,000 and Avon collected $16,500, according to the statistics.
A key problem, legislators said, was that the nip bottles are so small that they could not be placed into a recycling machine at a supermarket in order to receive a nickel in return. No recycling machines are currently being manufactured that can handle the miniature liquor bottles, lawmakers said. They also dropped the idea of having the nips returned by hand to a package store for the consumer to receive a deposit back.
Lori Brown, executive director of the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, says changing the law for a deposit — rather than the current fee — would help eliminate the trash of the miniature bottles that are sometimes thrown out of car windows and end up in parks and roadways around the state. The idea has been discussed in the past, and any changes in the law would be subject to negotiations in the legislature.
“If you put a deposit on those nips, they would disappear overnight,” Brown said in an interview. “They are everywhere. They’re clogging our waterways. They end up in streams. They would disappear from the landscape. Absolutely. They would be gone.”